Serpent's Tooth. James Axler

Brigid stated.

      “Why not? Erica knows. So do Sindri and the overlords. And the consortium has done business with each of them in the past,” Kane said. “In fact, Erica’s calling them allies now, after that blowout in China.”

      Brigid frowned. “And you let him in?”

      “He wasn’t in uniform,” Domi replied. “No coverall. No button. No Calico. But he’s consortium. I feel it.”

      Brigid glanced at Lakesh. “Any corroboration?”

      Lakesh shrugged. “Nothing definitive. However, he’s hale and healthy, with evidence of having received professional medical treatment. A recent scar on his arm confirms to DeFore that a real doctor stitched it up.”

      Reba DeFore was the redoubt’s chief medical officer. With the influx of staff from the Manitius Moon Base, the position didn’t weigh on her skills as much as it used to, but in the years preceding it, she’d gained a sharp eye toward medical treatment. The stranger’s apparent access to such treatment left few options open as to his affiliation. The Millennial Consortium was a budding technocracy, seeking to rebuild America in its own image. Those in charge of the consortium paid lip service to the creation of a utopian society, but their ruthlessness in the pursuit of that goal had brought them into savage conflict with the Cerberus warriors on multiple occasions.

      The consortium wanted a utopia, and its representatives were willing to kill every person who stood in the path to that objective. Unarmed foes were just as open to murder as the Cerberus personnel.

      “I also inspected the stranger’s gear,” Lakesh told the others as he led them toward the briefing room. “His kit includes a leather bullwhip that appears to have bloodstains.”

      “He also couldn’t stop buttering all of us up,” Domi added as they entered a room where Sela Sinclair and Edwards, members of the Cerberus away teams, stood guard over a bored man.

      “Worse than Lakesh in the beginning?” Kane asked, slipping into a faux Indian accent, trying to dispel his habitual unease with Balam’s old stomping grounds. “‘Friend Kane, beloved Brigid…’”

      Lakesh rolled his eyes but chuckled at Kane’s antics. “Not the same, but the man knows how to get his nose browned.”

      “What’s his name?” Brigid asked. Looking him over, she seemed to be turning over a memory in her mind, not quite believing it.

      “Austin Fargo,” Lakesh answered. Fargo sat, dressed in a white shirt, brown pants and a battered old leather jacket. A wide-brimmed hat sat on the table in front of the man. “And yes…he’s dressed almost note for note like the old movie archaeologist.”

      Kane tilted his head. “Has he gotten the earful from Sinclair about that?”

      Grant rolled his eyes. “Yeah, she only made me sit through those movies three times.”

      Kane glanced toward his partner. “I thought you liked ’em.”

      “After the third time, with Sela saying all of Dr. Jones’s dialogue line for line, it got tiring,” Grant responded. He glanced nervously toward Brigid. “Not that memorizing things is annoying, mind you.”

      Brigid winked at Grant. “No offense taken.”

      Kane examined the heavy revolver, the machete and the curled bullwhip. He picked up the whip, examining its light tan leather bandings. “You think you found blood?”

      DeFore knocked on the door, interrupting Kane’s thoughts. The medic, a stocky, buxom woman with bronze skin and ash-blond hair, brightened from a dour mood, seeing that Kane and the others were back from their trip to Cobaltville. Despite this, she remained businesslike. “I brought some chemicals to run a test on the whip.”

      “It wouldn’t mean much. He could have used it in self-defense, or the blood could have been from an animal,” Brigid suggested. “Or the chemical could luminesce in the presence of copper, horseradish, even bleach.”

      Kane handed the whip to DeFore. “So, how many times have you seen someone flay a horseradish root with a bullwhip?”

      “All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best,” Brigid returned.

      Kane nodded. “And you say I never learn.”

      Brigid managed a smile. In the darkened observation deck, DeFore sprayed the whip, and iron traces left behind by blood illuminated the last four feet of the wicked lash, glowing brightly. She pulled some tweezers, digging into a seam between two strips of leather.

      “What did you find?” Lakesh asked.

      DeFore turned on a small lamp, and the two scientists inspected the scrap trapped between the tweezer’s points. “Looks like skin. Dried out and desiccated, but skin. And this was just one clump of many that the chemicals exposed.”

      Kane glanced through the one-way mirror toward Fargo. “No fur?”

      DeFore shook her head. “None on closer examination.”

      Kane looked at his friends. “And what does Fargo want with us?”

      Lakesh looked at the whip as if it were a coiled cobra. “He said that he had discovered a cache of military technology in the Kashmir province of the subcontinent. A place between what used to be Pakistan and India. Both nations claimed the land before skydark, but it was always hotly contested, with terrorists and minor border skirmishes constantly erupting.”

      “So he came to us? We’ve got all the gear we could ever need here at Cerberus,” Grant interjected. “And if not just here, there’s also stuff at Cobaltville. Even the most dedicated army of looters couldn’t take all of the equipment stored in a ville.”

      “There’s got to be something more. Especially if he came to us, instead of returning to the Millennial Consortium,” Brigid said.

      “You think he’s consortium now?” Kane asked.

      Brigid nodded. “Your instincts are rarely wrong.”

      “What do you think?” Kane asked her.

      Brigid regarded Fargo through the glass. “We’ve had troubles in India before.”

      “Scorpia Prime and her doomsday cultists,” Kane noted. “Nagas, right?”

      Brigid confirmed Kane’s guess. “We might have solved the problem of Scorpia Prime, but the cult we dealt with may only have been a splinter of a much larger group.”

      “He claims to have encountered a much more dangerous group than just a few snake worshipers,” Lakesh stated.

      “They were savage enough,” Grant said, remembering his horrific stay and the suffering he endured at the hands of torturers.

      “No doubt, Grant,” Lakesh returned. “My apologies.”

      “It wasn’t you,” Grant said, ending that branch of the conversation.

      “He claims to have encountered a new party?” Kane asked.

      “Different from the overlords. He even referenced the genetically augmented soldiers of England. I wanted you to get a look at him, figure out what he actually was before we all talked with him,” Lakesh explained. “And if necessary…”

      “Loosen his tongue,” Kane concluded.

      “Shall we?” Lakesh asked.

      Kane picked up Fargo’s gear, hefting the bullwhip thoughtfully. “We shall.”

      SELA SINCLAIR HEARD Kane’s voice over her Commtact as she sat in the interrogation room with self-proclaimed archaeologist Austin Fargo.

      “Talk to him,” Kane said. “Make it seem like you give a shit what he’s all about.”

      Sela grunted an affirmative. “So, are you a freezie, or did someone show you the movies?”